France is moving to shut six mosques and break up several associations suspected of producing radical Islamic propaganda, Interior Minister Gerard Darmanin said on Tuesday (September 28).
Darmanin told Le Figaro newspaper that places of worship "suspected of being radical" and flagged by the intelligence services had been checked since November 2020. Of those, action to shut down six in five different departments across France had been launched.
The authorities would also request the dissolution of the Islamist publishers Nawa and the Black African Defence League (LDNA).
He said Nawa incites the extermination of the Jews and legitimises the stoning of homosexuals. LDNA organised a protest against police violence in front of the US embassy in Paris in June last year.
Last week, the Council of State, France's highest administrative court, approved the government's move to dissolve the Collective against Islamophobia in France (CCIF) and Baraka City.
The government started to act after the murder of a teacher, Samuel Paty, who was targeted following an online campaign against him for having shown controversial cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed published by the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo during a civics class.
Darmanin also said he had called on regional prefects to refuse any residence permits to imams sent by a foreign country.
